Simon Rules!

As I mentioned before, I bought a new MacBook Pro recently because the BGA (ball grid array) RAM chips on the graphics card of my old laptop partially desoldered themselves. That left me with a few options; throw it away, buy a new graphics card, or have it repaired. Since I would like to sell it, I ruled out option 1, and options 2 and 3 both cost upwards of $250. That left me with fixing it myself.

After having a look online, I found some people who had been successful in fixing their laptops. The BGA chips becoming desoldered is apparently a fairly common problem. In one success story, a guy used a heat gun and recommended that the work be performed outdoors due to the high temperatures. Having a concrete front porch, and it being a still day, I decided to do just that.

I bought a heat gun from Ace Hardware for $24. It has two temperature settings, 345 degrees C (650 degrees F) and 535 degrees C (1000 degrees F). Figuring that solder can melt anywhere between 200 and 450 degrees C, I decided to try on the lowest setting first. Holding the heat gun 2 inches from the first BGA memory chip, I gave it a blast for 30 seconds with a thick cardboard heat shield protecting the surrounding components. After doing all four chips, I tried the board in the laptop, but the problem was still not fixed.

So, feeling brave, I gave the first chip a blast on the higher setting. After about 15 seconds, my cardboard heat shield caught fire and a strong gust of wind shook my rig (circuit board placed on a metal cookie sheet). It was enough to dislodge some of the surface mount components on the underside of the chip. Not good at all. I moved my rig into the garage and completed the job on the next three chips.

After moving inside, I dug out my soldering iron, with a very clunky tip, and cleaned it the best I could. Somehow, I managed to steady my hand and resolder three resistors and two capacitors, some as small as a poppy seed. I checked the connections with my multimeter, and despite not knowing the resistor values, reading precisely 300 ohms on all of them comforted me.

I powered up my laptop expecting to see white smoke or a blank screen. To my utter disbelief, the damn thing powered on OK! Checking the hardware properties showed my video card was reporting a full 64MB instead of the 32MB before. And, no screen corruption! The big test was playing Half Life 2 though – it ran without a hitch!

So, if you need your laptop fixing, I am not doing that again. Go and find someone else.

Two updates in less than a week! What is the world coming to? On Friday we got a new kitten, called Oscar. He doesn’t look very kitteny because he is five months old. He is larger than our first (female) cat, but she’s definitely still the boss. I call this picture “The Staredown”. Locked in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, who will be the first to give in? This must be the only literal use of the phrase “cat-and-mouse”, ever.

The fence building is going OK, I put some of our new tools to use by cutting fence slats into complex shapes needed to fill the weird gaps we left. My idea to make a simple rectangular deck has inflated after seeing Amber’s aunt’s two-level deck with stairs, railings and 45 degree corners, made from “Trex”, a wood substitute. I now need to put the engineer in me to good use and design and build a great deck! The best part is that since it is under 30 inches off the ground, I don’t need a permit!

I was right about Nelly Furtado’s “Maneater”, it went to number one in the UK this weekend. My next prediction is for Lily Allen’s “Smile” to make number one also.

Argh, another month went by! I also realise I need to add a comments section here because I know you are all feeling gagged and desperate to make your opinions known.

I forgot to mention that shortly after my update last month, I got a new Mac! My Toshiba laptop decided to die because the BGA memory chips on the graphics card desoldered themselves, so I don’t have much of a working display. I am going to try to fix it with a heat gun so I can sell it, but I figured is was time for a replacement anyway since mine was over four years old. It still ran Half Life 2 really well, but man, it flies on the MacBook Pro! Here’s a pic of me editing this page (taken with a Sony Ericsson K750i camera phone and Bluetoothed to my Mac):

It’s a 17″ MacBook Pro, one from the “good” generation, so it doesn’t have problems overheating. It has a 2.16MHz Core Duo, and I switched the default 120GB 5400rpm hard drive for a 100GB 7200rpm one. I love OS X! It’s very much like RISC OS, which I love. One of the things I like the most is how it doesn’t install a driver for my mouse every time I switch it to a new port.

This month we also built a fence around our back garden (yard). In total it is around 200 feet long, but we pitched together with our neighbours to get fences around six houses done at once, so we had lots of people working on much more fencing. Our next project is building a 20 square metre (200 square foot) deck in the back garden. We bought almost $500 worth of tools in anticipation for this lofty goal.

I’ve been listening to way too much Lily Allen this month, but I don’t think you can have too much of a good thing. Also Nelly Furtado’s song “Maneater” has been gracing my iPod frequently.

Finally, I flashed Amber’s pink Motorola Razr phone with the Alltel firmware to re-enable full Bluetooth connectivity, since Verizon love crippling their phones. Now you can send photos taken on it to another phone or computer. However, it is still pink, but Amber likes it.

P.S. I am copying what I have seen in other blogs and I am increasing my photo size so you can actually see them.